The numbers coming out of Iran stop you cold: 12,000 to 20,000 dead in 48 hours. Not across months of civil war or years of grinding conflict, but concentrated into two January nights of systematic slaughter.

My guest on this recent WhoWhatWhy podcast, Shay Khatiri, insists we’re focusing on the wrong horror. The real question isn’t what happened on January 8 and 9 — it’s what comes next. Because this wasn’t an economic protest that got out of hand. This was the maximum force Iranian civil society can muster on its own. And it wasn’t enough.

According to Khatiri — a leading Iran scholar at the Yorktown Institute focusing on US foreign policy toward Iran and Russia – every previous uprising (2009, 2019, 2022) left a residue of unfulfilled promise and mounting rage. This time, the pattern breaks. What Khatiri heard from every source inside Iran, from overworked surgeons to furious shopkeepers, was the same plea: We’ll do everything we can, but we need help from outside.

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